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The Chairman of First HoldCo, Femi Otedola, has announced plans to invest $100 million in Dangote refinery.
He revealed his plans on Wednesday after leading top executives of First HoldCo to Dangote refinery.
Otedola’s planned investment is part of the $2 billion private placement Dangote refinery is targeting from private investors ahead of the initial public offering (IPO), which has no date yet.
Dangote, on October 22, 2025, said the refinery could sell up to 10 percent stake in the listing, which Bloomberg valued to be about $5 billion.
The billionaire is planning to make the IPO a cross-border listing to enable the refinery draw investments from domestic and international investors.
In an earlier report, Dangote said the IPO is designed to democratise wealth creation and give Africans direct access to participate in the continent’s industrial transformation.
On May 12, Bloomberg reported that the billionaire is reportedly aiming for a valuation of up to $50 billion for Dangote refinery.
On his part, Aliko Dangote, president of the Dangote Group, says the company is targeting a private placement of about $2 billion for the refinery.
The private placement is the latest announcement in the refinery’s Initial Public Offering plan, IPO expected later in the year.
Recall that Dangote is reportedly targeting a valuation of up to $50 billion for his refinery business ahead of the planned IPO.
In 2025, Dangote said the refinery could sell up to 10 percent stake in the listing, which Bloomberg valued to be about $5 billion.
While the actual date for the IPO is yet to be announced, Dangote refinery is expected to conduct the public listing later this year.
Dangote is planning a cross-border listing, which he said will enable Africans to finance the continent’s industrialisation.
Dangote announced the target when Femi Otedola, chairman of First HoldCo, visited the refinery and Otedola led top executives of First HoldCo on a tour of the refinery and the fertiliser plans in the Lekki free trade zone area.
The team also visited key project sites such as the jetty, a facility built by Dangote industries to receive large vessels.
Africa’s largest pension fund and its biggest asset manager flew into Lagos last week to tour a refinery that its owner wants ordinary Africans to own a piece of — and left convinced the continent had been underselling itself.
Aliko Dangote announced plans to list the Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals on the Nigerian Exchange, framing the move not as a capital-raising exercise but as an invitation. He wants retail investors across Africa to buy directly into the industrial infrastructure that has historically been built by outsiders, owned by outsiders and priced for outsiders.
The declaration came as Dangote received the leadership of South Africa’s Government Employees Pension Fund, the Public Investment Corporation and Alterra Capital Partners at the Ibeju-Lekki facility on the outskirts of Lagos. The GEPF is Africa’s largest defined benefit pension fund, holding the retirement savings of more than 1.8 million South African public servants. The PIC, which manages those assets alongside others, oversees roughly $230 billion — making it the continent’s largest asset manager. These were not casual visitors.
Dangote told the delegation that Africa’s next growth phase cannot be borrowed or donated into existence. It must be built — through industrial projects large enough to create jobs at scale, anchor domestic production and spread the returns broadly enough to matter.
“We are opening the doors for investors to participate directly in Africa’s industrial future and the prosperity it will create,” he said.
The refinery’s commercial case rests on a gap that should have been closed decades ago. Most African nations still import refined petroleum products despite sitting atop significant energy resources and facing growing industrial consumption. Dangote said demand for polypropylene, aviation fuel and refined petroleum products has already exceeded what his team projected — a problem of success that is shaping expansion plans and reaffirming the investment thesis behind the facility.
His description of the current supply situation was blunt. Nigeria came first in his original thinking, with exports to follow. The market had other ideas.
“Even with our current production, we are practically living hand to mouth because the market demand is extremely high,” Dangote said.
GEPF Chairperson Frans Baleni said the tour settled something for him. The scale of what he saw at Ibeju-Lekki, he argued, demands a fundamental reassessment of what Africa is capable of executing — not just by foreign observers, but by Africans themselves. Projects of this magnitude, he noted, have long been mentally filed under other continents. The Dangote complex, he said, makes that assumption indefensible.
